THE STATE exams body is introducing new procedures after last year’s security blunder in the Leaving Cert which cost the taxpayer more than €1 million.
Last June, the higher level English paper had to be rescheduled for a Saturday after a superintendent in Drogheda, Co Louth, distributed the wrong paper. This superintendent has not sought employment with the State Exams Commission (SEC) this year.
Under new safeguards, exam superintendents have been given additional training. Other procedures include:
- Superintendents have been directed to immediately contact the SEC should anything happen during the examinations which may threaten the integrity of the examinations;
- Any subject composed of two written examination papers has been scheduled so that one paper is held in a morning session and one in an afternoon. Morning papers are packed in green packets and afternoon papers are packed in orange packets;
- Revised arrangements have been introduced for the validation of the examination paper packets before each examination session. Superintendents are now required to collaborate with each other to ensure that each has collected the correct packet of examination papers. Both superintendents will be required to complete and sign the "declaration" panels on each other's exam paper packets.
The SEC says it will also put in place new contingency arrangements to ensure revised exam papers can be quickly distributed if there is another security blunder. Last year, the delay in getting the revised paper to schools was widely criticised.
This year’s State exams begin on Wednesday. More than 54,000 students will sit the Leaving Cert while more than 55,500 will take the Junior Cert. Exams will be held in 105 different subjects.
For the first time this year, almost 2,000 students are taking the new “user-friendly” project maths course in 24 schools. Students following the pilot Project Maths programme will take the same first paper as the other Leaving Cert maths candidates next week, but they will have a different second paper. Project Maths will be rolled out in all schools over the next three years.
The SEC engages 4,655 superintendents to supervise at 4,607 exam centres. It will provide 17,233 reasonable accommodations to facilitate candidates with special needs and will employ more than 6,000 examiners to mark the papers.
There are 1.9 million individual test items including written examination scripts, art and craftwork pieces and project work.
The overall cost of running the examinations in 2009 was €66.6 million, of which €9.7 million was collected in fees.
